Wednesday, September 6, 2017

review: Hällas

Do you wish you could turn back time when The Mammas (and the Papas) sang you to sleep but now you're stressed out?

Don't be alarmed, you will be experiencing a disruption in the time-space continuum. It is 2017 in the world outside, but this band brings you to 1969. They are inheritors to the changing of the guard or embody the transition itself, from psychedelic rock to heavy metal. The Swedish hippies create music that your grandparents might love. What would Cream think of the singing? What would The Doors or Iron Butterfly say if they heard the organ? Would they all be jealous and think, “I should have written that song, man. I hate the Swedish hippies from the future."? Would they welcome it?

The hippies at Woostock would dance in their birthday suits all day to this music. What are you going to do with this music? They give you a ticket to a different time and a different day, when rock and roll was searching new areas to explore and there were not a million genres and subgenres.

I was half joking when I said it's the music your grandparents would like. I am also serious. Put these Swedes right in the radio playlist of the classic rock station in your town and I doubt many people would notice anything peculiar.

Finally, one trait about them that might be of interest is that they like to rock. You won't hear those extended pieces of experimentation or those long segments of trippy instrumentation, like you do find in some psychedelic rock. You know, those pieces that are not songs, and feel like they are there wasting time because the band was abusing and consuming certain illicit substances. Plus, this band also keeps up the energy level throughput the album, not just for some songs. In other words, they want to rock.